Conquered the grape

Time to harvest my Concord grapes. Eating this robust and aromatic fruit is a treat that reminds me of its wild ancestor we gathered in late fall when I was a kid. The vines chose the tallest and most difficult climbing trees to reach for the sun and sweeten the fruit. Wild grapes are not the sweetest fruit in the forest but we picked as many as we could reach. Wild ones are small as a green pea and mostly seeds. But oh, they made the most delicious juice and jelly! And most thrilling to behold when sealed into jars for the winter. I wasn't familiar with rubies then but the clear red jelly brought as much joy to me upon completion of the work as any jewels.
I think the thrill had to do with the accomplishment. It took sweaty physical effort to gather buckets of the grapes. That was the job for kids – climbers. Mother did not climb trees. Dad was off somewhere doing man things. But I loved the job. Cooking the berries, squeezing the juice then cooking that with sugar required labor over a cast iron stove heated with a wood fire. Too dangerous for a kid. So from then on my part was the eating. No wonder the memories are pleasant.
The development of the Concord grape from the wild ones took ten years and 22,000 crossbreeding experiments on 125 vines. The vine that produced the chosen fruit still exists in the garden in Concord, Massachusetts, the parent of every Concord grape ever produced. In 1853 the Massachusetts Horticultural Society recognized the plant as a viable true reproducer. its seeds had been grown and tested for ten more years. The fruit was a welcome substitute for the wild one in those days when folks grew their own food. A physician named Welch successfully pasteurized the juice and that family went on to good health and prosperity.
That variety of grape is a plant that is easy to grow. Just put a twelve inch part of the vine into moist soil and it will do you proud. That's how we started our plant in the early nineteen seventies. I trim off most of the growth in the winter and let the vine put out new shoots each spring. No longer will I climb high to harvest fruit.
When the Hanford site became a mecca for job seekers in the 1940s, the Concord plants came along and the fertile alluvial soil of the Columbia Basin became a prime producer. Manufacturing and packaging began in 1941 and only recently was the facility sold to a larger firm to lose the Welch identity.
The grape is only one of the things in our lives that patient, persistent people have genetically altered for general pleasure. The bulldog was one I blogged about earlier. What a coincidence it was to discover the patient persistent botanist who developed the Concord grape was a man named Bull. That adds another interesting memory.
With a bucket tied to a string around my waist to free my hands for climbing, I was undaunted as I harvested those wild grapes high above the ground. My hands had to be free for picking. Every grape did not drop into the bucket. I could not hide my thievery; my mouth was purple for days. The color at least ran true through the thousands of changes by Mr Bull.
Naomi Sherer